TOYKO – Gymnast Simone Biles doesn’t owe her sport, her country, the shameless cheerleaders at NBC or greedy Olympic overlords a bleepin’ thing.
On Tuesday, Biles made puzzled American sports fans that love her spit out their morning coffee with a move as stunning as any gravity-defying trick in her bag.
She took her job as queen of the Summer Games and shoved it.
And know what I say?
Bravo, Simone!
“I say put mental health first before your sport,” Biles insisted, after withdrawing from the team competition in which she had been counted on to lead the United States to a gold-medal victory.
You go, girl. Drop the weight of the world off your shoulders and take care of yourself. You already have more gold than any woman needs. Don’t come back and perform at the Olympics unless it feels absolutely right, from deep in your heart to every aching bone in your 24-year-old body.
What’s messed up with Biles? Make no mistake. It’s her head.
With eyes of the sports world glued to her, Biles showed the brave honesty to admit being a burnt-out ball of confusion in a dangerous sport where any shred of doubt or one small mistake can result in serious injury.
The reason the greatest gymnast of all time suddenly bolted the Olympics’ five-ring circus? It’s not a twisted knee or bum ankle. “My pride is hurt a little bit,” Biles said.
Her availability to defend her all-around Olympic championship on Thursday is now very much a day-to-day proposition, not to mention very much in doubt.
After awkwardly landing a vault early in the team competition, she peered into the stands of a nearly empty arena at a Games that never would’ve been held if billions of dollars weren’t more important to Olympic fat cats than the physical and mental health of athletes that make them rich.
“This Olympic Games I wanted it to be for myself,” said Biles, trying with all her might not to cry. “I came in and felt like I was still doing it for other people. That just hurts my heart that doing what I love has been kind of taken away from me to please other people.”
In what had been hyped as her spectacular Olympic finale, with the possibility of a six-medal haul, something seemed off-kilter with Biles from her first step on Japanese soil.
She stumbled and grimaced through qualification for the all-around, vault, floor exercise, beam and uneven bars, disciplines she has grown to rule after bursting on the scene as a precocious teenager in 2013. On the eve of medal competition, Biles strongly hinted at her inner struggle in an Instagram post.
“I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times,” Biles admitted Monday. “I know I brush it off and make it seem like pressure doesn’t affect me, but damn sometimes it’s hard …”
She’s the GOAT. But even great ones can choke. And know what? There’s no shame in that because anxiety is just painful proof we’re all human and imperfect.
During the COVID-19 pandemic that delayed the Games in Tokyo by a year, Biles mastered a new, ground-breaking, imagination-shaking move on her vault: a Yurchenko double pike with a blind landing. It’s absurdly complex, terribly risky and almost unfathomably beautiful.
But during warm-ups at the Ariake Gymnastics Center, it was obvious Biles didn’t trust herself, going so far as to question the wisdom of trying to be perfect, when anything less would be regarded as a disappointment.
“I was still struggling with some things,” Biles said. “Therapy has helped a lot, as well as medicine. That’s all been going really well. Whenever you get in high-stress situations, you kind of freak out and don’t really know how to handle all of those emotions, especially at the Olympic Games.”
Her nerves jangled, Biles decided to take a much more conservative run at the vault to open team competition, but her execution was so shaky it further shook her already dented confidence.
Biles consulted her coach and the team trainer, then walked off the floor, putting the rest of her Olympic program in doubt, while leaving everyone in the arena scrambling for an explanation, as Hoda Kotb of NBC’s “Today Show” made an ever-loving fool of herself, standing up to yell at the U.S. gymnasts: “I love you!”
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After taking a break backstage, she returned to cheer her teammates, as they finished a distant second to the Russians.
Way back in May, when Biles competed for the first time in 18 months after a pandemic-forced hiatus, there was a moment of foreshadowing. Before a showcase meet in Indianapolis, she contemplated her brilliant resume, as well as the strain of leading her sport out of the sexual-abuse scandal caused by disgraced team doctor Larry Nassar.
It was clear on that spring day in May that Biles was counting every hour, not merely making X’s on the calendar in anticipation of the Olympics, but desperately looking forward to the day she could retire.
Nearly three months ago, Biles sighed and revealed just how much she wanted to get on with the rest of her life: “Only 12 more weeks,” she said.
Down to the final six days of her brilliant career, Biles is running on empty, uncertain if she can take another step, much less defy gravity.
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